Bread baked in brick ovens has certain appetizing characteristics and physical qualities. The home baker generally bakes bread in glass or metal pans. To achieve qualities similar to those of brick oven baked bread, home economists often advise lining an ordinary household oven with clay tiles or ordinary bricks and to bake the dough directly on the tile or brick surface without the use of a glass or metal pan. Such practice has many inconveniences, such as those of handling and storing the bricks as well as wasting much heat energy to heat the bricks in order to bake the dough.
Earthenware baking or cooking vessels made of unglazed or of glazed ceramics are known and have been used in baking breads. However, the surface of unglazed, or bisque, ceramicware is often quite porous and bread baked in such ware tends to stick to the walls of the vessel making it difficult to remove. In the case of glazed ceramicware, the glazed surface does not provide the baked bread product with the taste qualities of brick oven surfaced baked bread.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,168,334 of William B. Crandall et al. discloses a method for baking bread which has the taste and physical characteristics of brick oven baked bread. In the method of this patent, comprising bread dough is baked in a bread pan comprising a porous fired brickware body having a water permeability of at least about 2 percent and having at least its baking surfaces coated with a fired terra sigillata coating which closes only a portion of the pores of said surfaces of said body.
The process of the Crandall patent, although it often produces a fired body with a relatively smooth surface, does not repeatedly produce a bakeware with a very smooth surface. Bakeware with very smooth surfaces are easier to clean and, furthermore, are easier to use.
Furthermore, the process of the Crandall patent often produces fired bakeware which, over time, becomes discolored due to the migration of soluble salts in the bakeware to its surface.
It is an object of this invention to provide a process for preparing ceramic cookware in which a relatively smooth and durable layer of terra sigillata is deposited on the surface of the cookware.
It is another object of this invention to provide a process for preparing ceramic cookware in which the cookware so provided exhibits substantially less scumming than the prior art cookware.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a process for preparing ceramic cookware in which the incidence of crack propagation during processing is minimized.